Gregory Hines Quotes

I wanted to be Stan Laurel, then I wanted to be Fred Astaire and then Captain Kangaroo. I actually started out as a radio announcer when I was 17 and never left the business, so that's literally 70 years.

I started performing in 1950 at the age of 16 when I joined the Burton Lester's Midgets as a performer. Shortly after, I became a DJ with Mecca Organization before joining Billy Smart's Circus as a clown and shadow Ringmaster.

I'm all for big production - I love putting on shows.

You know what my earliest memories are? Going from one burlesque town to another. My father was in burlesque.

You just don't see the same type of all-purpose entertainers nowadays.

I've been in show business for 50, no, 60 years. I was approached in school to join a variety act.

I've had 79 to 80 years of show business. I started when I was 5 with a man called Tom Mix. I didn't have time to go to school because I was in silent movies, I was in radio, I was in burlesque, I worked with the circus. I'm all show business!

There were a great many in vaudeville - people who never quite came through. But they had their place, and they filled it. They kept theatres open. Those pan-timers, those interstate-timers, those four-a-dayers, those six-a-dayers - they were an integral part of that endearing merry-go-round called vaudeville.

I didn't learn fire-eating to conquer my fears. I learned fire-eating because I desperately wanted to be in show business.

I never called my work an 'art'. It's part of show business, the business of building entertainment.

Being a dancer and a singer gave me some advantage with regards to having a stage presence. I always take my timing from the audience because they are half of my act.

I love stage actors. There's something special about all people who have to do a performance eight shows a week, and musical people, especially, are so much fun.

When I wasn't wrestling, I was always at the circus or at a show watching all these people - 'how do they make their stuff work for their audience?' That used to fascinate me as a child.

I've always been obsessed with being on stage and putting shows together.

I call it 'new forms'. When you're starting out, they ask you to do four or five minute sets, but once you're a headliner, you do like 90 minutes. I try to think of different things to divvy up the show, like doing drawings, playing music... I gotta carry the show, that's the problem.

I did a lot of things when I first started out. In order to be in show business, I juggled, I did magic tricks, cards tricks and I played the banjo.

Going back to Georgiana Drew and John Drew, and my great-grandfather Maurice Barrymore, and it was such a sort of circus of odd, interesting people that loved acting.

Magic is the oldest part of the show business profession. It can now be used as a forward-thinking tool to build a child's confidence. It has been an amazing part in many entertainers' lives, including Steve Martin and the late Johnny Carson.

Sammy Davis, I backed him up. I used to study him every night. I saw how great performers worked and was able to incorporate a little bit from the best.

I was very interested in vaudeville. It was the only sort of discipline that was a five-minute act on stage, which is what I really enjoyed and saw myself doing. And I bought books on it.

As far as show business, it's the gratification of doing something that pleases the fans.

I was a weirdo to want to be in show business. Most kids wanted to be teachers or nurses.

When I get older, I want to be a Kristin Chenoweth and Sutton Foster - you know how they do all of it? I just want to do anything that has to do with performing.

Well, I was sort of a jack-of-all-trades in show business for a long time. I was a singer and a dancer and then I got a job as an actor.

So many people are working in vaudeville today that I looked for three weeks to book enough acts for an hour bill and didn't have them until the night before we opened in Buffalo and money was no object!